Sony closed a second online network for its gaming customers and said for the first time that hackers had stolen account information on thousands of payment cards.
The company disabled the Sony Online Entertainment system, which serves players of its EverQuest and other games played from personal computers.
More than 70m users of Sony’s online gaming network have had their names, e-mail addresses and passwords stolen by a hacker in one of the largest privacy breaches to date.
Sony announced on Tuesday that the information had been taken – six days after it closed the PlayStation Network – as it began e-mailing users of the free service with warnings to be on the lookout for scams.
MPAA, Sony, Google vs. little guys
This seems to be the week of the big media guys beating up the little guys and the little guys fighting back.
On Monday, the Motion Picture Association of America sued the new DVD streaming service Zediva. On Tuesday, Sony said its PlayStation Network had suffered outages as a result of attacks by the Anonymous group of hackers. On Wednesday, Google said it had removed an app for the Grooveshark music streaming service from the Android Market.
Sony makes most GDC game moves
The 2011 Game Developers Conference, one of the “majors” in global video game events, has just wrapped up here in San Francisco after five days of events and announcements surrounding new games, technologies and services.
Nintendo gave us a first look at the Wii at GDC five years ago, Bill Gates launched the original Xbox here in 2000 and Sony pushed out its Move motion controller last year. While there was nothing of the same magnitude this year and Microsoft appears to be ignoring GDC for big announcements these days, we still had a keynote from Nintendo’s chief Satoru Iwata and a flurry of news from Sony.
Music in the air
Time to throw out the 78s, LPs, CDs, cassettes and even your digital downloads? With so many services offering to stream your favourite songs over the internet and store playlists now, there seems no need for a permanent record collection.
After exploring cloud gaming last week, the Personal Technology column in the FT’s Business Life section this week looks at cloud music services, ahead of the inevitable entry of Google and Apple.
Sony’s smart and dumb game moves
There was one inexplicable omission in the features unveiled for Sony’s next-generation portable (NGP) device in Tokyo on Wednesday night and one bold and exciting move regarding the future of the PlayStation platform.
Nintendo beats Sony on glasses-free 3D
Nintendo was showing off its 3DS handheld game console at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, begging the question of where was Sony’s 3D PlayStation Portable.
Sony made a point at its news conference that it was bringing 3D to the smaller screen, with products like the Bloggie camcorder, but a gaming machine was notable in its absence.
The next waves: Microsoft Kinect, Sony Move
Waving at our televisions is replacing button pushing with the new motion controllers for games consoles from Microsoft and Sony.
The Kinect, launched in Europe this week, and Sony’s Move are inspired by the Wii, but what do they offer that’s better or different from Nintendo’s big success? – a question I sought to answer in the Personal Technology column in the FT’s Business Life section this week.
Google TV – too buttoned up for the living room
Getting to know Google TV involves familiarisation with 80 buttons on Sony’s remote control, compared to just three on the recently launched Apple TV.
The extra 77 buttons, plus function-key combinations, sum up how, in trying to combine a full web experience with regular television, Google and its partners have added a complexity that may intimidate many consumers.
I reviewed Sony and Logitech’s Google TV units in the Personal Technology column in Friday’s FT Business Life section and compared them with rival systems. An extended breakdown of how Google TV shapes up against the competition is after the jump.
Sony unveils MusicUnlimited at Berlin show
Sony is challenging Apple and Google with an internet “cloud-based” music streaming service that will be available on many of its networked consumer electronics products.
The MusicUnlimited service was announced at IFA, a major consumer electronics show in Berlin, barely an hour before Apple’s own music-themed press conference in California.
After the jump, the archive of our live coverage of the event.
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Older entries
